Not gonna comment much on tortollan, im fairly indifferent ob the matter, as I didnt have a particular dislike towards turtle mage.
But what a shame this nerf to ga is. I theory crafted so many different ways they could work around the card and upping the mana just makes it a druid only card. Instead they could leave it at 7 but remove the rush component - that way hunter could still run it with tundra rhino, which, admittedly, wasn't done, but it would be an option for wanting hunter players, who would look for an edge in the use of the card over druids, also the latter still would have the option to rush the pulled beasts with broom, at a now 8 mana cost. Another, albeit much more obscure option was making twilight runner a hunter class card, move thresher to druid and make teachers pet a neutral card. It isn't clean due to the discussion of class identity and such, but the shift in power levels would be very appropriate imo as well as introducing a decent defensive midrange card for some decks.
Electra is very interesting indeed, I encourage experimentation, she won't do much with the spell roster in here, most of the spells don't benefit from getting cast twice, the main synergy would be with Haunting Visions either from the spell you discover or making your next spell cost 6 less, which has implications with The Storm Bringer or Rain of Toads. It also does help with Invocation of Frost. Looking at the list, the only cut I can see would be Krag'wa, the Frog though.
As for Mutate, perfectly reasonable to run in here, I'd cut Frost Shock though for that one.
A lot of the cards in here are semi flexible, but I would replace them either with a card that is similar in mana cost or does a very similar thing, which is the main thing to consider when making changes.
It's also tokeny like the one from almanarria, but it's more geared towards control, with lots of removal and more epmphasis on dawnspeakers that are supposed to accrue a lot of stats on your followers before going in for a finisher. Aside from glimpse and haunted relic, there's not many ways to kill your own stuff. But why bother - spiders can chump block and are perfect expendable attackers. It's super hard to not have stuff dying, so all the cards that are active once something has died are basically always active. Rhasa and Dawnspeakers are value machines, and Vanguard Redeemer keeps you going for a while.
I want to make one thing clear right off the bat - I'm not a fan of draft, so take this critiscism with a pinch of salt.
The thing that felt incredibly lackluster about this mode was the lack of diversity of the card buckets. Add to that the trade option and you find yourself in a format where it's highly consistent to tailor a deck how you would want it exactly with the only caveat in comparison to constructed decks being the ability to include more than 3 copies of any card in your deck. In my 3 runs I averaged anywhere between 4 and 6 cards that were a 5 or 6 of in my deck. There are a few problems I saw with this:
Firstly, individual card power is very disproportionate in LoR. You take a card like vile feast - playable on 2 - 2 mana 1/1 ping and awakening brood - playable on 3 - 6 mana 3 2/1's and you see how it's not even a contest. Better cards will be preffered, even synergies will struggle to keep up, when individual cards' power levels will improve your win chances when you can consistently draw and play them.
This leads to my second point. Unlike draft or in this case Arena in hearthstone, expeditions seemed completely like stat checks. In hearthstone you struggle to work with what you have, and try to respond to your opponent. In runeterra you are so specific in how you made your deck, that every game will play out the same and it will come down to the simple fact how well the opponents cards match up to yours. There is very little decision making involved.
One of my expeditions' 7th match was a very clear example of this. I had a spider token spam deck with around 5 broods, 6 crawling sensations and 4 elises. My opponent had frostbite spam. I saw 6 harsh winds, 4 flash freezes, 3 ashes, 2 of the minion (I forgot it's name) that frostbites the strongest enemy at the start of the turn, and I counted 2 brittle steel. It was a complete mismatch for him, he had no chance, but obviously, if I didn't have a deck that went wide cosistently it would be completely different.
Obviously, it's an issue of the current card pool - it's just not that diverse, but in the present state, that made expeditions highly unenjoyable for me.
Not gonna comment much on tortollan, im fairly indifferent ob the matter, as I didnt have a particular dislike towards turtle mage.
But what a shame this nerf to ga is. I theory crafted so many different ways they could work around the card and upping the mana just makes it a druid only card. Instead they could leave it at 7 but remove the rush component - that way hunter could still run it with tundra rhino, which, admittedly, wasn't done, but it would be an option for wanting hunter players, who would look for an edge in the use of the card over druids, also the latter still would have the option to rush the pulled beasts with broom, at a now 8 mana cost. Another, albeit much more obscure option was making twilight runner a hunter class card, move thresher to druid and make teachers pet a neutral card. It isn't clean due to the discussion of class identity and such, but the shift in power levels would be very appropriate imo as well as introducing a decent defensive midrange card for some decks.
Thanks for the kind words!
Electra is very interesting indeed, I encourage experimentation, she won't do much with the spell roster in here, most of the spells don't benefit from getting cast twice, the main synergy would be with Haunting Visions either from the spell you discover or making your next spell cost 6 less, which has implications with The Storm Bringer or Rain of Toads. It also does help with Invocation of Frost. Looking at the list, the only cut I can see would be Krag'wa, the Frog though.
As for Mutate, perfectly reasonable to run in here, I'd cut Frost Shock though for that one.
A lot of the cards in here are semi flexible, but I would replace them either with a card that is similar in mana cost or does a very similar thing, which is the main thing to consider when making changes.
This surprisingly became my favorite deck of the preview patch as well as the expeditions patch.
It's also tokeny like the one from almanarria, but it's more geared towards control, with lots of removal and more epmphasis on dawnspeakers that are supposed to accrue a lot of stats on your followers before going in for a finisher. Aside from glimpse and haunted relic, there's not many ways to kill your own stuff. But why bother - spiders can chump block and are perfect expendable attackers. It's super hard to not have stuff dying, so all the cards that are active once something has died are basically always active. Rhasa and Dawnspeakers are value machines, and Vanguard Redeemer keeps you going for a while.
I want to make one thing clear right off the bat - I'm not a fan of draft, so take this critiscism with a pinch of salt.
The thing that felt incredibly lackluster about this mode was the lack of diversity of the card buckets. Add to that the trade option and you find yourself in a format where it's highly consistent to tailor a deck how you would want it exactly with the only caveat in comparison to constructed decks being the ability to include more than 3 copies of any card in your deck. In my 3 runs I averaged anywhere between 4 and 6 cards that were a 5 or 6 of in my deck. There are a few problems I saw with this:
Firstly, individual card power is very disproportionate in LoR. You take a card like vile feast - playable on 2 - 2 mana 1/1 ping and awakening brood - playable on 3 - 6 mana 3 2/1's and you see how it's not even a contest. Better cards will be preffered, even synergies will struggle to keep up, when individual cards' power levels will improve your win chances when you can consistently draw and play them.
This leads to my second point. Unlike draft or in this case Arena in hearthstone, expeditions seemed completely like stat checks. In hearthstone you struggle to work with what you have, and try to respond to your opponent. In runeterra you are so specific in how you made your deck, that every game will play out the same and it will come down to the simple fact how well the opponents cards match up to yours. There is very little decision making involved.
One of my expeditions' 7th match was a very clear example of this. I had a spider token spam deck with around 5 broods, 6 crawling sensations and 4 elises. My opponent had frostbite spam. I saw 6 harsh winds, 4 flash freezes, 3 ashes, 2 of the minion (I forgot it's name) that frostbites the strongest enemy at the start of the turn, and I counted 2 brittle steel. It was a complete mismatch for him, he had no chance, but obviously, if I didn't have a deck that went wide cosistently it would be completely different.
Obviously, it's an issue of the current card pool - it's just not that diverse, but in the present state, that made expeditions highly unenjoyable for me.